Waterloo, Ontario-based smartphone maker Research in Motion, Ltd. (TSE:RIM) is facing a potential end-of-life scenario as it scrambles to deploy its next generation BlackBerry 10 (BB10) operating system to market. BB10 was supposed to arrive early this year, but instead was pushed back to a late 2012 launch. Customers were left waiting... and waiting.

The latest sign of the company's sales woes comes as Canadian manufacturing partner Celestica Inc. (TSE:CLS) announced it would "wind down" production of BlackBerries and commit to "restructuring" to produce more popular devices -- like Android smartphones.

It seems that RIM will likely survive long enough to deliver BB10 out of sheer stubborn will, if nothing else. But amid mounting financial losses and a complete dissolution of the company's assets from head to tail, the question will be what will be left of it when it gets there.

"Intel is investing heavily (think gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours) in resources to create an Intel host controllers spec in order to speed time to market of the USB 3.0 technology." -- Intel blogger Nick Knupffer